2 .\" Copyright (c) 2009, Charles McGarvey
3 .\" All rights reserved.
5 .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
6 .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
8 .\" * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,
9 .\" this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
10 .\" * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
11 .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
12 .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
14 .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS
15 .\" IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED
16 .\" TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
17 .\" PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR
18 .\" CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL,
19 .\" EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
20 .\" PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR
21 .\" PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF
22 .\" LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING
23 .\" NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE,
24 .\" EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
27 .TH YOINK 6 "July 24, 2009"
29 Yoink \- An alien-smashing action game.
31 .B yoink [-h|--help] [-i|--info] [OPTION=VALUE]...
35 Leap tall buildings! Crush stupid robots beneath your feet! Wield your
36 extra-terrestrial powers in the defence of humanity, and send those alien
37 invaders back from whence they came! This is Yoink.
39 You play the part of a flying alien heroine who must defend her home on Earth
40 from other airborne alien invaders. The game draws inspiration from classic
41 arcade games like Joust, Bombjack, Rampage, and Defender--simple, fast-moving
42 action. Basic arguments include:
45 Display basic usage information, and exit immediately.
48 Display build and environment details, and exit immediately.
52 To attack, you must dive on the enemy at high speed. If you're going too
53 slowly, you'll just drift harmlessly by. Diving from above gives different
54 results from swooping in and hitting them from the side. If you're too close to
55 attack, try to build up speed by running away and bouncing off a nearby
58 By charging your special alien powers, you can throw fireballs. The orange bar
59 at the top of the screen represents your power level--at maximum, you can
60 destroy almost anything. Aiming can be tricky, but with a little practice it's
61 quite easy to launch them in the right direction. Try doing a little swoop or
62 circle in the air to line yourself up before releasing your fireball.
64 The heroine has limited energy, measured by the blue bar at the top of the
65 screen. When it runs out, it's game over! She can regain lost energy by
66 picking up bonuses dropped by enemies.
68 To complete the current attack wave, you must destroy all the enemies. Hunt
69 around, especially in the sky, if you can't find the last few.
73 There are a plethora of options available for tweaking various aspects of the
74 game. All options can be set either from a configuration file or by passing
79 configuration file ("yoinkrc") consists of key-value pairs. The format is not
80 unlike that of other configuration files you are already familiar with. The
83 looks for configuration files and loads them in this order, the options from
84 each subsequent configuration files taking precedence over the same options if
85 they exist in previous files.
88 This is the base configuration file which should be considered read-only. Look
89 to this file as an example of the format used for configuration files.
92 This is the system-wide configuration file. Not available on Windows.
95 This is your own personal configuration file.
98 This is an optional environment variable you can set to point to a configuration
101 Options that are passed as arguments take precedence over options loaded from
102 the configuration file(s). This mechanism can be used to play the game with
103 temporary settings which you do not intend to retain. Here are some examples of
104 passing options on the command-line:
107 yoink fullscreen=true
108 Run Yoink with the option
110 as true. This will run the game in full-screen mode.
113 Run Yoink with the option
115 as 60. This will cap the display rate at 60Hz.
117 You can also set options with array values. Arrays can be passed on the command
118 line by surrounding all the parts with curly brackets and separating each part
119 by a comma. You may also have to quote the brackets so your shell doesn't parse
122 yoink videomode=\\{1024,768\\}
123 Run Yoink with the top
125 as the numbers 1024 and 768. The video size will be 1024x768.
127 Here is a list of some of the options available:
130 The level of detail. Possible values are 1, 2, or 3 where 1 means the least
131 amount of detail and 3 means the most. This effects the number of objects drawn
132 to the screen. A high level of detail will draw everything but could cause poor
133 frame rates if the graphics driver can't keep up with the load. Lower levels
134 will omit certain details which aren't crucial for playing the game with the
135 possible benefit of higher frame rates. See the Notes for more ways to increase
136 the game's performance. The default value is 3.
139 If true, double-buffering will be used to help minimize distortion and artifacts
140 caused by the animation of the game. Otherwise, a single buffer will be used.
141 The default value is true.
144 If true, the window will capture the display and render the game in full screen
145 splendor. A value of false means the game will run in a window. The default
149 The maximum number of frames to be drawn per second. If your computer is really
150 old, you can get away with decreasing this value and still have reasonably
151 smooth animation. You can set this to a very high number to effectively render
152 as many frames as is possible, but the actual rate could be limited by vertical
153 display synchronization, depending on the X11 driver and settings used. You
154 should not set this option higher than the point where the vertical
155 synchronization effectively limits the draw rate or else the game may not be
156 able to update the physics on schedule which could actually significantly lower
157 the quality of the animation. The default value is 40.
160 If true, the current number of frames being drawn per second will be printed to
161 the console. The default value is false.
164 If true, the window will be resizable by the window manager. This option is
165 meaningless if the game is drawing to the full screen. The default option is
169 This option effects the visibility of the cursor while it is "hovering" over the
170 display. If the value is true, the cursor will be visible. Otherwise, the
171 cursor will be hidden. The default value is true.
174 The number of times per second the simulation state will be updated. A value
175 of 100 or higher is ideal for a better physical simulation. Values that are
176 much lower cause the CPU to do less work, but accuracy will suffer. Errors
177 could be introduced in the game with extremely low values. The default value
181 The resolution or size of the window. The value is an array with three number
182 elements representing the width, height, and bits per pixel that make up the
183 video mode. The third number is optional. The default value is {800, 600}.
185 This is only a list of the more useful options. You'll have to use the source
186 to find out about the more esoteric options, but you probably won't need to.
191 responds to some variables in the environment:
194 If set to a path of a valid directory (presumably a user's home directory),
196 will look for a file at
198 and load it as a configuration file.
202 uses this variable to guess the user's nickname, for a high score entry or
206 If set to a path of a valid directory,
208 will look in this directory first when it is loading game assets. Set this
209 variable if you move the game's assets to another directory or perhaps want to
210 load your own custom assets rather than the defaults.
213 If set to a path of a valid configuration file,
215 will load the options from that file, and those options will take precedence
216 over options loaded from other configuration files.
220 Yoink may or may not be playable with acceptable frame rates without a hardware
221 accelerated OpenGL driver installed and working, depending on how fast your CPU
222 is. Yoink is really not all that heavy on graphics, but it doesn't take much to
223 overload a software implementation. If you're stuck without hardware
224 acceleration, there are some things you can do to get better frame rates, in
225 order of effectiveness:
227 1. Decrease the resolution.
230 option or just resize the window if the
232 option is false and the
234 option is true. This speeds up software renderers considerably.
236 2. Decrease the timestep.
239 option. You can set the timestep to be as low as the your
241 option, but it is not recommended to set this lower than the target frame rate.
242 Remember the trade-off here is decreased simulation accuracy. Try this to set
243 your frame rate to 30Hz and your timestep to 60Hz:
245 yoink maxfps=30 timestep=maxfps\\*2
247 3. Decrease the level of rendering detail.
250 option. The game world may look sparse or incomplete, but that may be better
251 than choppy animation.
255 Although the pixelated graphics are intentional, there are some unintended
256 artifacts which are more obvious on certain OpenGL implementations.
258 Send bug reports, patches, and love notes to:
260 Charles McGarvey <@PACKAGE_BUGREPORT@>
263 Neil Carter was the original creator of Yoink, his winning entry in the
264 uDevGames 2003 Mac game development contest. Charles McGarvey restored the game
265 and is the current maintainer.
projects / chaz / yoink / blob